Endangered City


Book Description

Security and risk have become central to how cities are planned, built, governed, and inhabited in the twenty-first century. In Endangered City, Austin Zeiderman focuses on this new political imperative to govern the present in anticipation of future harm. Through ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Bogotá, Colombia, he examines how state actors work to protect the lives of poor and vulnerable citizens from a range of threats, including environmental hazards and urban violence. By following both the governmental agencies charged with this mandate and the subjects governed by it, Endangered City reveals what happens when logics of endangerment shape the terrain of political engagement between citizens and the state. The self-built settlements of Bogotá’s urban periphery prove a critical site from which to examine the rising effect of security and risk on contemporary cities and urban life.




Endangered Cities


Book Description

Any war wreaks havoc on cities as well as the countryside. Endangered Cities explores specifically the urban experience in twentieth-century war-torn Europe. Volume contributors draw on the history of cities in seven European countries between 1914 and 1945 in which in almost every instance the boundaries between civilian and military powers collapse. Eleven original essays examine major phenomena during the urban war-time experience, including the effort to anticipate and defend against air attack, the burdens of siege and occupation, the rituals that developed around popular entertainment, black markets, the problems posed by death and destruction, and how cities devastated by war rose from the rubble to rebuild. Contributors include: Martin Baumeister, Roger Chickering, Davide Deriu, Marcus Funck, Andreas R. Hofmann, Benoît Majerus, Efi Markou, Karl D. Qualls, Eva-Maria Stolberg, Guy Thewes, Julia S. Torrie, and Malte Zierenberg.










The SAGE Handbook of the 21st Century City


Book Description

The SAGE Handbook of the 21st Century City focuses on the dynamics and disruptions of the contemporary city in relation to capricious processes of global urbanisation, mutation and resistance. An international range of scholars engage with emerging urban conditions and inequalities in experimental ways, speaking to new ideas of what constitutes the urban, highlighting empirical explorations and expanding on contributions to policy and design. The handbook is organised around nine key themes, through which familiar analytic categories of race, gender and class, as well as binaries such as the urban/rural, are readdressed. These thematic sections together capture the volatile processes and intricacies of urbanisation that reveal the turbulent nature of our early twenty-first century: Hierarchy: Elites and Evictions Productivity: Over-investment and Abandonment Authority: Governance and Mobilisations Volatility: Disruption and Adaptation Conflict: Vulnerability and Insurgency Provisionality: Infrastructure and Incrementalism Mobility: Re-bordering and De-bordering Civility: Contestation and Encounter Design: Speculation and Imagination This is a provocative, inter-disciplinary handbook for all academics and researchers interested in contemporary urban studies.




Cities of Whiteness


Book Description

This groundbreaking book brings the study of whiteness and postcolonial perspectives to bear on debates about urban change. A thought-provoking contribution to debates about urban change, race and cosmopolitan urbanism Brings the study of whiteness to the discipline of geography, questioning the notion of white ethnicity Engages with Indigenous peoples' experiences of whiteness – past and present, and with theoretical postcolonial perspectives Uses Sydney as an example of a 'city of whiteness', considering trends such as Sydney's 'SoHo Syndrome' and the 'Harlemisation' of the Aboriginal community




Urban Wastelands


Book Description

Faced with the growing demand for nature in cities, informal greenspaces are gaining the interest of various stakeholders - residents, associations, public authorities - as well as scientists. This book provides a cross-sectorial overview of the advantages and disadvantages of urban wastelands in meeting this social demand of urban nature, spanning from the social sciences and urban planning to ecology and soil sciences. It shows the potential of urban wastelands with respect to city dwellers’ well-being, environmental education, urban biodiversity and urban green networks as well as concerns regarding urban wastelands’ in relation to conflicts, and urban marketing. The authors provide a global insight through case studies in nine countries, mainly located in Europe, Asia and America, thus offering a broad perspective.







Multi-Unit Housing in Urban Cities


Book Description

This book investigates the development of multi-unit housing typologies that were predominant in a particular city from the 1800s to present day. It emphasises the importance of understanding the direct connection between housing and dwelling in the context of a city, and the manner in which the city is an instructional indication of how a housing typology is embodied. The case studies presented offer an insight into why a certain housing type flourished in a specific city and the variety span across cities in the world where distinct housing types have prevailed. It also pursues how housing types developed, evolved, and helped define the city, looks into how dwellers inhabited their dwellings, and analyses how the housing typologies correlates in a contemporary context. The typologies studied are back-to-backs in Birmingham; tenements in London; Haussmann Apartment in Paris; tenements in New York; tong lau in Hong Kong; perimeter block, linear block, and block-edge in Berlin; perimeter block and solitaire in Amsterdam; space-enclosing structure in Beijing; micro house in Tokyo, and high-rise in Toronto.




Plants and Habitats of European Cities


Book Description

A collection of studies on the ecologies of European cities, including Paris, Zurich, and Amsterdam among others. Discussion includes the natural and historical development of each city, local flora, the environmental impact of city growth, and environmental planning, design, and management.